Article

Automatically sync only certain playlists without losing music

By Jerrod H. ● Thursday, February 23, 2006

Ask iLounge offers readers the opportunity to get answers to their iPod-, iPhone-, iPad-, iTunes-, or Apple TV-related questions from a member of the iLounge editorial team. We'll answer several questions here each week, and of course, you can always get help with more immediate concerns from the iLounge Discussion Forums. Submit your questions for consideration using our Ask iLounge Submit Form. We reserve the right to edit questions for grammar, spelling, and length.

Q: I normally let my iPod auto sync my entire music collection. However it also syncs all of my playlists too. However, I’d like to exclude certain playlists, whilst still having all my music onboard (with the autosync option). Can I do this?

- Anonymous

A: There’s officially not any way to do this, but with a little trickery, we can get iTunes to do what you want. iTunes’ default option for “Automatically update all songs and playlists” won’t work, since that, as you’ve discovered, synchronizes everything. Neither will “Automatically update selected playlists only,” because then you won’t have all of your music—only that which is contained in the selected playlists.

However, the latter of the two options has a loophole. If we can create one playlist that automatically and continuously contains everything in the library, and add it to our list of “selected playlists”, then we are free to deselect other playlists in iTunes’ iPod preferences without having to synchronize less than the entire library.

Add this single Smart Playlist to your iPod’s selection of playlists, and you’re free to deselect as many others as you’d like: